The Willis Tower (SkyDeck) – Chicago, Illinois

My girlfriends and I spent the weekend in Chicago doing the most touristy things 🤗 My favorite was definitely the Skydeck because I appreciate an eagle’s eye view of any place.

Here are fun facts about the from the Skydeck website:

Willis Tower is 1,450 feet (443 meters) high – 1,730 feet (520 meters) including twin antenna towers.
Willis Tower is the twelfth-tallest building in the world; it is the second tallest building in the North America and the Western Hemisphere, standing 1,450 feet and 110 stories tall.
Willis Tower is home to the highest public viewing area in the United States.
The Skydeck is 1,353 feet (412 meters) above the ground.
The lowest level of Willis Tower is 43 feet (13 meters) below the Franklin St. elevation.
The combined weight of the building is 222,500 tons – that’s 445,000,000 lbs., 201,849,000 kg, or almost 20,000 city buses!
The cost of building Willis Tower was in excess of $150 million.
Willis Tower opened in 1973 and took 2,000 workers 3 years to build. It took the Ancient Egyptians 20 years to build the pyramids at Giza.
The building has 4.5 million gross square feet (418,064 gross square meters) of floor space; or roughly 101 football fields.
On a clear day, you can see four states – Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. Visibility from the Skydeck is approximately 40-50 miles (65 – 80 kilometers).
The average sway of the building is approximately 6 inches (152 millimeters) from true center, but the building is designed to sway up to 3 feet.
Willis Tower has approximately 16,100 bronze-tinted windows.
6 roof-mounted robotic window washing machines clean all 16,100 windows.
Willis Tower elevators operate as fast as 1,600 feet (488 meters) per minute – among the fastest in the world.
Willis Tower contains 25,000 miles (40,223 kilometers) of electrical cable.
Approximately 43,000 miles (69,200 kilometers) of telephone cable runs through the building – enough to stretch across the continental United States 15 times!
Willis Tower was designed for more than 12,000 occupants.
Approximately 25,000 people enter the building each day.
Approximately 1.7 million tourists visit the Skydeck each year.
The Ledge’s glass boxes extend out 4.3 feet from the skyscraper’s Skydeck on the 103rd floor. Each box weights 7,500 lbs.
The Ledge’s glass boxes are comprised of three layers of half-inch thick glass laminated into one seamless unit.
The Ledge’s boxes have a thin film over the top layer of glass that assures a clear view 1,353 feet straight down!
The Ledge’s glass boxes are designed to retract into the building, allowing easy access for cleaning and maintenance.
The Ledge is built to withstand five tons of pressure and can hold 10,000 lbs!
The Ledge has what is called “heat tracing” to melt snow off the glass.